Waza National Park

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Waza National Park
Elephants under an acacia in Waza
Elephants under an acacia in Waza
Waza National Park (Cameroon)
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Coordinates: 11 ° 20 ′ 0 ″  N , 14 ° 44 ′ 0 ″  E
Location: Extreme North , Cameroon
Surface: 170,000 ha
Founding: 1934
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Elephant in Waza National Park.
Giraffes in the burned grasslands during the dry season in December.

The Waza National Park (French Parc national de Waza ) is a 170,000 hectare biosphere reserve in the province of Extreme North in Cameroon . The entrance to the park is on the road between Maroua and Kousséri in the southwest of the Waza plain , the park itself in the Lake Chad basin at an altitude of 300 to 500 m above sea level .

The reserve was established in 1934 and declared a national park in 1968 . The state of Cameroon has applied for it to be included in the list of UNESCO World Natural Heritage . It is connected to the Chingurmi-Duguma sector of the Nigerian National Park Chad Basin via a biosphere corridor.

The climate is typical of the Sahel : semi-arid and tropical. The rainy season lasts from June to October while the dry season lasts from November to April. The average rainfall is 600 mm and the temperature fluctuates between 15 and 48 ° C.

The huge grassy areas in the eastern part of the Waza National Park are flooded during the rainy season. The western part is of varying density, mostly wooded with acacias . Rare plant species are Hyparrhenia rufa , Sorghum arundinaceum , Echinochloa pyramidalis , Pennisetum ramosum , Vetiveria nigritana and Oryza longistaminata .

Due to the activities of the terrorist group Boko Haram , the park cannot currently be visited.

Wildlife

One of the most prominent large animals that are native to Waza is the lion , which lives here in one of its northernmost occurrences. The population was around 100 in the 1960s, but around 50 lions were still living in the park in 2002. The last census in 2007-2008 showed that only a remnant of 14 to 21 lions are left. If drastic protective measures are not implemented, the lions of the area are threatened with extinction in the near future.

In addition, Waza is still home to the African elephant . The park is one of the last strongholds of these gray giants in the Sahel region, although it has never offered more than a few hundred sufficient living space. In extreme dry seasons, the animals sometimes even had to be supplied with water. In addition, one of the last larger giraffe populations within the Sahel and individual cheetahs can be found here . Often Buffon- Kobantilopen . After these antelopes suffered a sharp decline in the park in the 1980s and their number fell from 20,000 to just 2,000, their populations rose again to around 5,000 by the mid-1990s. Other larger herbivores in the park are warthogs , roan antelopes , red- fronted gazelles and corrigum lyre antelopes . Less common are reedbuck , waterbuck and Duiker . Bushbuck and red flank duiker , on the other hand, have not been found in the area since the 1980s. Hippos , black rhinos and Cape buffalo were also found in the area in the early 20th century , but these species are now absent. The park is also home to around 379 species of birds, such as B. Crowned cranes .

  • Birds

  • Giraffes

  • Fleeing giraffes

  • Waza Park

The park is affected by the Maga Dam built in 1979 in the south .

literature

  • Wally and Horst Hagen: The African national parks as habitats for elephants . In: Vitus B. Dröscher (1990): Save the Elephants of Africa (pp. 216–217)

Web links

Commons : Waza National Park  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

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  1. ↑ Park Management Program of the Chad Basin National Park ( Memento from October 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on Nigeria National Park Service (English)
  2. ↑ PN Tumenta, JS Kok, JC van Rijssel, R. Buij, BM Croes, PJ Funston, HH de Longh and HA Udo de Haes (2009). Threat of rapid extermination of the lion ( Panthera leo leo ) in Waza National Park, Northern Cameroon . Afr, J. Ecol. 1-7
  3. ^ Paul Scholte, Saleh Adam and Bobo Kadiri Serge: Population trends of antelopes in Waza National Park (Cameroon) from 1960 to 2001: the interacting effects of rainfall, flooding and human interventions . African Journal of Ecology Volume 45 Issue 3, Pages 431 - 439. doi : 10.1111 / j.1365-2028.2007.00774.x
  4. ↑ https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/1887/4290/9/photos_highres.pdf Study by the University of Leiden